How To

How to start your own blog in less than 30 minutes!

I started this Food Blog as a hobby a few years ago not for money or for profit, but mainly because I love cooking. I love testing out a new recipe or hearing someone compliment me on what a great meal they had! Of course it does not hurt when someone asks ‘hey can I have that recipe for that awesome dish’ I can easily point them to my blog and walla!

Now if you are like me and was freaking out about what all goes into making a blog then you have come to the right corner of the WEB! Its very daunting when you think about launching your very own blog and people are throwing big words at you like Domain names, Hosting, WordPress, themes, widgets…that alone is enough to scare me off! Fear not, its not as oppressive as it sounds…read on!

First off…you have to know what content you want to blog about. Like me I just wanted a space on the great world wide web to place my recipes, maybe take a few pictures, talk about stuff…I mean how hard can that be right?

STEP 1 – Reserving your Domain Name

The first thing I did was figure out what I wanted to name my blog. I wanted it to be something related to food and the types of food I liked. And so TASTESSPICY.COM was born…because I go nowhere without my trusty hot sauce! To find out if someone already has your Domain name simply go to www.Bluehost.com. Click on New Domain and enter it in the box. It will tell you if it is available or not and it will give you different variations of the name as well.

STEP 2 – Hosting my Domain

Now in the real world we all know nothing is free. Which means after you have chosen your Domain Name or the name of what your blog is going to be, you have to find a company to host or keep that name from being taken from you for the next year or two. This is a service we have to pay for. Luckily for you, to make life simple, www.Bluehost.com also does this! I know its like a one stop shop! How cool is that! You simply enter in how long you want to be hosted for and what perks you would like to get with your hosting.

Step 3 – WordPress or purchasing a template to work with.

Behind every great Domain and Hosting is an even better page Template! While the Domain name and the hosting are the most important parts to getting your blog started, you need a great Here I am Page! Or a page with a clean layout. It should be easy to use, clean on the eyes, sort of like seeing a nice guy walking down the street, and saying to your self…not bad at all…you know what I mean? It should be appealing, make the visitor want to come back.

And for this you can use wordpress. Bluehost also hosts word press and it will even convert your site to wordpress so that it is easier to use. Another great Template builder is Template Monster. And they are compatible with Bluehost and WordPress.